Just more of the same?

What's the biggest barrier to entry for new bloggers? I've heard from many that it's the concern about being able to generate new content that people want to read.

Good.

Blogging is way to get involved with the online community and offer new thoughts or ideas, instead of simply consuming the vast amounts of information thrown at you by the Internet. Often people (or companies) are more concerned with simply dipping a toe into the world of social media instead of wondering whether they actually have something worthwhile to contribute. To quote Seth Godin, "The question to ask isn't, 'but how does this help me?'" But "what can I offer to the conversation to help the community?" (not a direct quote).

• To companies that want to publish a blog just because they hear it's the next new thing: give it up. People really don't care about your thinly-veiled attempts to promote a product or service by writing a blog post. Google's blog gets huge amounts of traffic because Google has figured out a way to provide content through that vehicle that can't be found anywhere else.
• Fast Company published a great article this month about the hundreds of top brand-name companies that opened a presence in Second Life before figuring out the community and how they were going to genuinely contribute to it. Now all these companies have reevaluated their involvement and are coming at this world with a renewed sense of contribution to the discussion.

The amount of reposted information that I'm confronted with daily is staggering. Not just from news sites and online aggregators, but from individual bloggers that just want to drive traffic to their sites without providing their own spin on topics. If 50 of your closest friends want to post about the new Gmail developments, wouldn't you be interested in reading what their different takes are -- as opposed to just saying "look at the new Gmail developments!"?

Please, say something new and interesting, or just stay out of the conversation.